[Dovecot] dovecot authentication failing

[David Mehler]

Hello,
I'm running dovecot 2.0.x on a centos 5.6 machine. This is a new
installation, I haven't even opened the firewall to it yet. I was
trying to telnet localhost 143 and 110 trying to authenticate a user.
I'm getting authentication failure in my maillog but no details.
Here's the one line I get in my maillog:

May 14 15:33:42 ohio dovecot: pop3-login: Aborted login (auth failed,
1 attempts): user=<user at example.com>, method=PLAIN, rip=127.0.0.1,
lip=127.0.0.1, secured

Here's a doveconf -n:
# 2.0.12: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
# OS: Linux 2.6.38.3-linode32 i686 CentOS release 5.6 (Final) ext3
auth_default_realm = domain.com
auth_mechanisms = plain login
base_dir = /var/run/dovecot/
disable_plaintext_auth = no
listen = *
mail_location = maildir:/var/spool/mail/vhosts/%d/%u
maildir_very_dirty_syncs = yes
mbox_write_locks = fcntl
passdb {
  args = scheme=CRYPT username_format=%u /etc/dovecot/users
  driver = passwd-file
}
protocols = imap pop3
service auth {
  unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/auth {
    group = postfix
    user = postfix
  }
}
ssl_cert = </etc/pki/dovecot/certs/dovecot.pem
ssl_key = </etc/pki/dovecot/private/dovecot.pem

Here's how I constructed my users file:
#
# Passwd-file for use with dovecot authentication
# Used in a virtual setup
# Username:{scheme}HashedPassword:UID:GID::
user:{SSHA512}hbLu+pCmhmtyKEwyAs3wv3kvHD/ryr0MoXOAq3VdB7X/g8qIE/xE9BG+eI4jhFk9pTyiCltPCjZxv5/+yK1wll2LNcw=
:5000:5000::

My goal is to use this with a postfix virtual mailbox setup, the
postfix part is already in place. The mailbox base is
/var/spool/mail/vhosts and under that there's example.com which is the
domain and under that the various users one just called user for this
example. The Uid and Gid 5000 is the same one the postfix vmail user
is running as that's the user who handles the virtual mailbox domains.

I'm suspecting my issue is in my users file or the definition of it in
passwd-file{ i've been over the wiki for 2.0.x dovecot, this was
definitely worth the upgrade by the way, and thus far have not found
an answer.

I'd appreciate any help.
Thanks.
Dave.